Saturday service to be restored to some libraries amid cuts

Published 12:01 am, Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Hours of operation at Houston Public Library branches will be reduced for the second time in 18 months, officials of the financially burdened system said Tuesday. Previously discontinued Saturday service at 16 neighborhood locations will be restored, however.

Library Director Rhea Lawson said the reductions were prompted by a fiscal 2012 budget almost $5 million smaller than last year's. This year's $32.4 million allocation also necessitated laying off 38 employees and trimming funds for books and other library materials by 19 percent.

The cut in hours - 13 to 16 percent systemwide - will begin Aug. 8.

"The new library service hours were determined after a careful examination of HPL's primary use statistics, including the times and days of the week library locations are busiest, book and other materials borrowing and specific kinds of library use, such as in-person visits and remote access by phone and Internet," Lawson said.

Hardest hit was the express mini-library at downtown's Discovery Green, where the 28-hour week was cut by half. More typical of the cuts in the system's 42 libraries was Acres Homes Neighborhood Library, which saw its 40-hour week trimmed to 34 hours.

Downtown's Central Branch will suffer no immediate reductions, but summer-schedule Sunday closures - usually lifted in the fall - will be extended through the end of the year.

The reductions are the second since April 2010 when Saturday service at most libraries was dropped. At the time, Lawson said usage patterns justified the Saturday closings.

"We've been taking to people, taking a lot of customer feedback," library spokeswoman Sandra Fernandez said of the decision to restore Saturday service to 16 neighborhood branches. With that change, 27 locations will offer some Saturday hours.

Saturday service was jettisoned in library branches near schools to ensure that weekday hours - arguably the most valuable to students - could be maintained. Fernandez said the restored Saturday service will not undercut efforts to provide after-school access.

The Acres Homes branch, for example, will be open until 6 p.m. most weekdays and until 8 p.m. on Tuesdays. It will remain closed on Saturdays and Sundays.

Despite the reduced funding for FY 2012, the public library system fared better than expected.

In April, Lawson, predicting a budget almost $10 million smaller than that of the previous fiscal year, braced staffers for layoffs and the likely closing of some branches.

Fernandez said the library system's new schedule should be posted on its website, www.houstonlibrary.org, by week's end.

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